The island’s Defense Ministry said the F-16V, the most advanced type in Taiwan’s fleet, went missing from radar screens after taking off from the Chiayi Air Base in southern Taiwan for a training mission over a coastal firing range.
President Tsai Ing-wen issued instructions to spare no efforts in the search and rescue mission and “to further clarify the cause of the accident,” her spokesman said.
The government’s Rescue Command Center said witnesses had seen the aircraft crash into the sea and helicopters and ships were searching for the pilot.
Air Force Inspector-General Liu Hui-chien said the aircraft had only recently been upgraded to the “V” version, with new weapons systems and avionics.
Combat training for the F-16 fleet has now been suspended, he added.
In late 2020, an F-16 vanished shortly after taking off from the Hualien Air Base on Taiwan’s east coast on a routine training mission.
Last year, two F-5E fighters, which first entered service in Taiwan in the 1970s, crashed into the sea off the southeast coast after they apparently collided in mid-air during a training mission.
While Taiwan’s air force is well trained, it has strained from repeatedly scrambling to see off Chinese military aircraft in the past two years, though the accidents have not been linked in any way to these intercept activities.
China, which claims the democratic island as its own, has been routinely sending aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense zone, mostly in an area around the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands but sometimes also into the airspace between Taiwan and the Philippines.
Quebec has announced plans to impose a “health tax” on residents who refuse to get the Covid-19 vaccination for non-medical reasons, as a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic overwhelms the province.
Premier François Legault announced the new “contribution” for the unvaccinated on Tuesday, as the province reported 62 new deaths, bringing the total number of people killed by Covid-19 in the province to 12,028 – the most in Canada.
“A health contribution will be charged to all adults that don’t want to get vaccinated. We are there now,” he said. “Those who refuse to get the shot bring a financial burden to hospital staff and Quebecers. The 10% of the population can’t burden the 90%.”
The move follows the abrupt resignation of a senior health official in the province, amid mounting anger over new lockdown measures, hospitals at capacity and the slow rollout of vaccine boosters.
Quebec made headlines last week when it announced that customers in cannabis shops and liquor stores would need proof of vaccination, leading to a surge in new bookings.
But while other provinces have accelerated the rollout of booster shots to fight the contagious Omicron variant, Quebec has only recently opened access to residents 40 years of age and above. In Ontario, residents over 18 have been able to access the booster since mid-December.
News of the tax, the first of its kind in the country, comes less than a day after the province’s public health director tendered his resignation. Dr Horacio Arruda served in the role for 12 years and was reappointed to another three-year term in June 2020, but has faced mounting criticism in recent weeks.
“Recent comments about the credibility of our opinions and our scientific rigour are undoubtedly causing some erosion of public support,” wrote Arruda in his resignation.
Arruda faced particular condemnation for allowing care home staff to move between sites during the first wave of the pandemic. That decision played a key role in helping the virus spread unchecked and contributed to more than 4,000 deaths – many of them among seniors.
Most recently, Arruda was faulted for his dismissal of the benefits of N95 masks, saying they were not necessary for teachers or healthcare workers. Quebec’s worker safety board disagreed and recently ordered healthcare workers be provided with the more effective masks.
As the Omicron variant sweeps across the province, prompting new lockdown measures and a government-ordered curfew – the only one in the country – Quebecers have been forced to reckon with the fact that their province appears to once again be the among the worst-hit regions of the country.
“I’m not going to mince words: things are bad right now when it comes to hospitalizations,” said Dr Donald Vinh an infectious disease specialist at McGill University’s health centre. “Every time there’s a ceiling, in terms of hospital capacity, the hospitalization rate breaks through that ceiling.”
The province’s health minister estimated last week that at least 20,000 healthcare workers due to Covid-19 infections 50,000 are on leave for burnout.
Quebec’s timing during the pandemic has often been unlucky: the first wave hit as families travelled during a school break, bringing home the virus when they returned. But more than two years later, the province still struggles in executing its plan to fight the virus.
It eschewed access to rapid tests and has since cut off access to PCR tests due to overwhelming demand. On Tuesday, 600,000 boxes of rapid tests are set to be distributed to Quebec amid growing frustration from residents that the tools needed to combat the pandemic are unavailable.
The government has sent mixed messages by imposing a curfew – but also slowly rolling out booster vaccines, said Vinh.
Hospital intakes keep rising and there is little indication the province has reached its peak. Despite early hopes Quebec might experience a similar rapid rise and drop to South Africa, Vinh calls those hopes “foolishly naive” and that a new approach is needed.
“The virus is going to continue to propagate here until we get it under control,” he said. “And wishful thinking isn’t how we’re going to fight it.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the Eighth Conference of Military Educationists of the Korean People’s Army at the April 25 House of Culture in Pyongyang, North Korea in this undated photo released on December 7, 2021. KCNA via REUTERS
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Launch detected on Tuesday by Japan, S.Korea
Kim officially at test for first time since March 2020
U.S., EU condemn tests as threat to peace
Tests follow Kim’s vow to boost military forces
SEOUL, Jan 12 (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for boosting the country’s strategic military forces as he observed the test of a hypersonic missile, state media said on Wednesday, officially attending a missile launch for the first time in nearly two years.
On Tuesday authorities in South Korea and Japan detected the suspected launch, which drew condemnation by authorities around the world and prompted an expression of concern from the U.N. secretary-general. read more
The second test of a “hypersonic missile” in less than a week underscored Kim’s New Year’s vow to bolster the military with cutting-edge technology at a time when talks with South Korea and the United States have stalled.
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After watching the test, Kim urged military scientists to “further accelerate the efforts to steadily build up the country’s strategic military muscle both in quality and quantity and further modernize the army,” KCNA news agency reported.
It was the first time since March 2020 that Kim had officially attended a missile test.
“His presence here would suggest particular attention on this programme,” Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, posted on Twitter.
Unlike some other recent tests, ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun published photos of Kim attending the launch on its front page.
“While Kim probably unofficially attended other tests in the interim, this appearance and its Page One feature on Rodong Sinmun is important,” said Chad O’Carroll, chief executive of Korea Risk Group, which monitors North Korea. “It means Kim is not concerned about being personally associated (with) tests of major new tech. And doesn’t care how the U.S. sees this.”
U.N. Security Council resolutions ban all North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear tests and have imposed sanctions over the programs.
Talks aimed at persuading North Korea to surrender or limit its arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles have stalled, with Pyongyang saying it is open to diplomacy but only if the United States and its allies stop “hostile policies” such as sanctions or military drills.
U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland called the launches dangerous and destabilising.
“It obviously takes us in the wrong direction,” she said at a regular briefing in Washington on Tuesday. “As you know, the United States has been saying since this administration came in that we are open to dialogue with North Korea, that we are open to talking about COVID and humanitarian support, and instead they’re firing off missiles.”
The European Union on Tuesday condemned the latest North Korean missile launch as a “threat to international peace and security” and called on Pyongyang to resume diplomacy.
‘SUPERIOR MANOEUVERABILITY’
Despite their name, analysts say the main feature of hypersonic weapons is not speed – which can sometimes be matched or exceeded by traditional ballistic missile warheads – but their manoeuvrability, which makes them an acute threat to missile defence systems.
Photos released by state media appeared to show the same type of missile and warhead that was first tested last week, analysts said.
“The test-fire was aimed at the final verification of overall technical specifications of the developed hypersonic weapon system,” KCNA reported.
After its release from the rocket booster, a hypersonic glide vehicle made a 600 km (375 mile) “glide jump flight” and then 240 km of “corkscrew manoeuvering” before hitting a target in the sea 1,000 km away, the report said.
South Korean officials had questioned the capabilities of the missile after the first test last week, saying it did not appear to demonstrate the range and manoeuverability claimed in a state media report and featured a manoeuverable warhead rather than an actual glide vehicle.
On Tuesday, however, South Korea said the second test appeared to show improved performance, with the missile reaching top speeds up to 10 times the speed of sound (12,348 km per hour / 7,673 miles per hour), although they did not comment on its manoeuverability.
“The superior manoeuverability of the hypersonic glide vehicle was more strikingly verified through the final test-fire,” KCNA said.
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Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Josh Smith; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Richard Pullin
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WHEATLEY, Ontario — Electricity is cut off. Guards sit in cars on every corner. Hundreds of people are out of their homes, some without access to their clothing or belongings.
And officials are frantically working to unravel the grim mystery of what exactly caused a gas explosion last August in Wheatley, Ontario — and how to prevent another explosion from happening.
More than four months after the blast shuttered Wheatley’s downtown and injured 20 of the town’s 2,900 residents, the authorities still don’t know where the gas leak came from, or why it happened.
Residents and local officials are examining the risks associated with the town’s history as a site of 19th-century gas wells, vestiges of the area’s oil and gas industry. Many are now grappling with whether the center of the town, which was formally recognized in 1865, should be permanently abandoned.
“It still is one of those like really surreal things where you tell people like, yeah, the town blew up,” said Stephanie Charbonneau, a schoolteacher who was forced to flee her house with her family. “Who knows what’s going to happen at the end of all of this? What is Wheatley going to look like?”
In the 1890s, gas wells were dug to supply heat and power to homes and businesses in and around Wheatley, which is in southwestern Ontario on Lake Erie. Over time, the wells became obsolete and buildings were constructed directly on top of them; the wells’ locations were loosely, if at all, documented.
Before the blast, Wheatley was mostly known for its Lake Erie fishery; a shipyard; and a lakeside provincial park. Few people in the community knew about the gas wells, or that an explosion had leveled a meeting hall in 1936. Stories of gas leaks from the town’s oldest residents and newspaper accounts of older explosions begin circulating only after the August explosion.
The first sign of trouble was on June 2, when Whit Thiele, a local business owner, went to investigate a foul odor in the basement of a downtown commercial building he owned. There, he saw water pouring through cracks in the foundation and through a drain in the floor before pooling into a fizzing mass.
Mr. Thiele felt ill, became woozy and had to be revived by firefighters who evacuated the area around the office.
Sensors were then installed and quickly began detecting hazardous gases, leading firefighters to evacuate the area around the building twice more during the summer.
Nearly three months later, on Aug. 26, Steve Ingram, the president of the local shipyard, and his wife, Barb Carson, were getting ready for dinner at home when firefighters again began taping off an evacuation zone because of a gas leak.
“Well, here we go again,” Mr. Ingram recalled saying to his wife that evening. “Sooner or later this place is going to blow up.”
Suddenly, the sound of the explosion filled the air. The windows of the Ingrams’ home bent in and then popped outward, miraculously without breaking, as the shock wave toppled their belongings throughout the house. While insulation and other building materials began drifting down from the sky, the couple grabbed their phones and iPads, and fled wearing only T-shirts and shorts.
It was Mr. Thiele’s building that had blown up, taking down an adjacent pizzeria and laundromat as well a newly opened motel and bar. A surveillance camera across the street captured how a tongue of orange flame shot out of the building and then got sucked back inside before blasting the buildings into the sky.
Local officials quickly opened an investigation. Using ground-penetrating radar, they discovered the site of an old well under a paved parking lot behind the explosion site. Closer to the site, the ground continued to burp gas about every 40 days, which hinted at the source of the gas leak, and also spurred fears of another explosion.
But further investigating seemed to raise more questions than answers.
Don Shropshire, the chief administrative officer for Chatham-Kent, the regional municipality that governs Wheatley, said recent excavation work at the blast site has uncovered a second old gas well that may be leaking. Ontario officials have said there may be a third old well still hidden somewhere downtown.
“I’m reasonably confident that they’re going to find the source of the gas,” Mr. Shropshire said. “Whether or not it can be mitigated — that’s an entirely different question.”
While experts from Alberta, the capital of Canada’s oil and gas industry, have been bought in to assesshow and why the gas is surfacing, the threat of another explosion has slowed their progress.
About 300 people are still not allowed to return to their homes, and 38 of Wheatley’s businesses remain closed. There’s no estimate for when, or if, everyone will be allowed to return home permanently — or whether the destroyed buildings can even be rebuilt. Mr. Shropshire said it may prove impossible to ever safely reopen the area around the blast.
Wheatley residents have gone from shock to dismay to anger that more hasn’t been done to solve the mystery of the explosion or to start working on repairs. The province has committed about $3.96 million in assistance, but several shop owners said they have yet to see any of that money. They believe individual payments will be far short of what they will need to restart business.
“I try to keep my anger at a level,” said, Mr. Ingram, who has been allowed to return to his house only once, for one hour in early December, to gather up some winter clothing. He added, “I can’t even drive down and look at my house because my wife just bursts into tears.”
At a heated public meeting in November, local officials acknowledged the frustration and anger. But they also emphasized the complexity of the problem and said it will take time to solve it.
“I don’t want anyone to guess what the problem is, dump concrete on it and 60 years from now my grandkids who could be living in Wheatley have the same darn problem again,” Melissa Harrigan, a member of the town council, said at the meeting. “I am so sorry that it is disrupting your lives in so many ways I can’t imagine, I truly can’t, but I can say we’re trying.”
Who bears responsibility for the cost of all this is unclear. The companies that drilled the wells are long gone. There is talk that lawyers representing Wheatley residents will soon ask a court to approve a class-action lawsuit against the municipality, which owns the parking lot covering one of the wells.
The gift and custom woodworking shop that Tracey Declerck owns with her daughter still sits boarded up, and full of merchandise, immediately across the road from the blast site. “We’re little people, that’s my livelihood over there,” Ms. Declerck said in December while buffeted by the wind off Lake Erie. “Am I supposed to go get another job until they fix this?”
Ms. Declerck said she was concerned that the blast may have left her shop’s building structurally unsound. Like many people in Wheatley, she’s skeptical that a permanent fix for the leaking gas will ever be found.
Mr. Thiele, the business owner, said that he believes business insurance may become unaffordable in the town, and that public confidence will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to restore.
“I can’t imagine anybody building a building there and feeling safe,” he said.
LONDON — More than half of people in Europe could be infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in the next six to eight weeks, the World Health Organization warned on Tuesday, amid “a new west-to-east tidal wave sweeping across the region.”
“The region saw over seven million cases of Covid-19 in the first week of 2022, more than doubling over a two-week period,” Dr. Hans Kluge, the agency’s regional director for Europe, said at a news conference.
While coronavirus vaccines remain remarkably effective at preventing severe illness and death, the agency cautioned against treating the virus like the seasonal flu, since much remains unknown — particularly regarding the severity of the disease in areas with lower vaccination rates, such as Eastern Europe.
The W.H.O. has cautioned for months that booster shots could worsen vaccine inequality around the world, but Dr. Kluge said on Tuesday that they would play an essential role in protecting the most vulnerable people from severe disease and should also be used to protect health workers and other essential employees, including teachers.
Since Omicron was first detected in late November, it has torn across the planet at a pace unseen during two years of the pandemic. As friends, co-workers and family members test positive, the reality that the virus is moving quickly and widely has been a defining feature of this wave of infection.
But the steep rise that Dr. Kluge cited, based on forecasts by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, is a stark paradigm shift. Although the institute’s models have frequently been criticized by experts, it is clear that the virus is spreading quickly. Even if many people avoid severe illness, the virus promises to cause societal disruption across the continent.
While much of the public discussion has revolved around whether this was the moment when governments should shift policies and restrictions to treat the coronavirus as an endemic disease — removing most restrictions and allowing people to manage risk in a way similar to the way they do with influenza — the W.H.O. said it was too early to call this virus endemic.
Catherine Smallwood, a W.H.O. senior emergencies officer, said that one of the key factors in declaring the virus to be endemic was some sense of predictability.
“We are still ways off,” she said. “We still have a huge amount of uncertainty.”
Dr. Kluge added that there were simply too many unknown factors, including exactly how severe Omicron is for unvaccinated people and how high the risk is of infection leading to “long Covid” symptoms.
“I am also deeply concerned that as the variant moves east, we have yet to see its full impact in countries where levels of vaccination uptake are lower, and where we will see more severe disease in the unvaccinated,” he said.
Nations in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where Omicron is just starting to spread widely, have much lower rates of vaccination than those in Western Europe.
Despite the widespread level of infection, Dr. Kluge cited data from Denmark suggesting how effective vaccines remain. The hospitalization rate for unvaccinated people in the latest wave was “sixfold higher than for those who were fully vaccinated in the week over Christmas,” he said.
“Allow me to reiterate that the currently approved vaccines do continue to provide good protection against severe disease and death, including for Omicron,” he said. “But because of the unprecedented scale of transmission, we are now seeing rising Covid-19 hospitalizations. It is challenging health systems and service delivery in many countries where Omicron has spread at speed and threatens to overwhelm in many more.”
The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to Know
He added: “For countries not yet hit with the Omicron surge, there is a closing window to act now and plan for contingencies.”
One of the central struggles of governments across Europe has been trying to keep schools open, and Dr. Kluge described those efforts as essential.
“Schools should be the last places to close and the first to reopen,” he said, although he added that “the numbers of infected people are going to be so high in many places that schools in many countries are going to be unable to keep all classes open” because of illness and staff shortages.
An example of that pressure was apparent this week in France, where 10,452 classes were canceled on Monday, according to the government. Prime Minister Jean Castex said that going forward, schoolchildren in the country would be allowed to do self-tests instead of P.C.R. tests if one of their classmates tested positive, in an attempt to keep the education system functioning.
“If we were to shut down classes as soon as there is one first case, bearing in mind the explosion of Omicron, all French schools would be closed in a matter of days,” Mr. Castex told France 2 television.
But as countries consider shortening isolation periods for people who test positive to limit the effect on essential services, Dr. Kluge said that “any decision to shorten recommended quarantine or isolation periods should be taken in combination with negative Covid-19 tests and only when considered essential to preserve critical service continuity.”
The law, which effectively prohibits any discussion of LGBTQ themes in schools, was widely criticized by the opposition and civil rights activists when it was passed in June 2021. The European Union launched legal action against Hungary, a member state, over the legislation, saying that it violates the “fundamental rights of LGBTIQ people” under EU law.
The referendum is seen as a response by Hungary’s hard-line nationalist government to this criticism. The vote will be held on April 3, the same day as the country’s general parliamentary election.
Hungary’s right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban has argued that the law is not about violating LGBTQ rights, but about preserving parents’ rights to choose how to educate their children.
Orban has outlined a five-question referendum vote that will ask the public if they support the “promotion” of content related to sexual orientation to children and is urging the public to vote “no.”
When launching the legal action against Hungary in July, the European Commission said that Budapest had “failed to explain why the exposure of children to LGBTIQ content as such would be detrimental to their well-being or not in line with the best interests of the child.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the law a “shame” that goes against EU values. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte went as far as saying Hungary “has no place in the EU anymore.”
Experts and human rights advocates say Orban is hoping to score political points and divide his opponents ahead of the elections. Many of Hungary’s opposition parties have united in an attempt to defeat the longtime leader, but LGBTQ rights remain a major sticking point within the group.
In July, when Orban first proposed that a referendum on the law be held, he referred to a 2016 vote in which Hungary rejected the EU’s refugee resettlement plan but failed to reach a voter turnout threshold — making the referendum not legally binding.
“Then, a referendum and the common will of the people stopped Brussels,” he said. “We have already succeeded once and together we will succeed again.”
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, removes his face mask during a news conference.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
France saw its Covid-19 infection rate hit a new record on Tuesday as the new highly-contagious omicron variant sweeps across the European continent.
The figure of 368,149 in the last 24 hours trumps a previous record of 332,252 set on Jan. 5.
Its seven-day moving average of cases was nearly 270,000 on Monday, according to Our World in Data, significantly above tallies in neighboring nations like the U.K.
France is about to implement a strict Covid passport system whereby citizens will need to be vaccinated before they can enter restaurant or indoor events, rather than being either vaccinated or registering a negative test.
President Emmanuel Macron sparked controversy last week after saying he would make life difficult for those citizens who refuse a Covid-19 vaccine.
“I am not for bothering the French. I rant all day at the administration when it blocks them. Well, there, the unvaccinated, I really want to hassle them. And so, we will continue to do it, until the end,” the French leader said in an interview with Le Parisien.
His comments coincided with parliamentary discussions over the Covid passes. Macron used the French word “emmerder” in his interview with Le Parisien, which can be roughly translated as “hassle” or “annoy,” or would be close to the phrase “piss off.”
More than 50% of Europe’s population will be infected with the omicron Covid-19 variant over the next two months, according to forecasts shared by a top World Health Organization official.
Dr. Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, cited data from the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at a news briefing Tuesday, saying a new “West to East tidal wave” of omicron infections was sweeping across the region, on top of the previous delta variant which is still prevalent.
“It [omicron] is quickly becoming the dominant virus in Western Europe and is now spreading into the Balkans,” Kluge said. He added that the region saw more than 7 million infections in the first week of 2022, more than doubling over a two-week period.
Catholic and Jewish leaders in Rome have condemned an “offensive and unacceptable” funeral procession in which the coffin was draped in a Nazi flag and mourners gave the fascist salute outside a church.
Photos and video of of the Monday funeral service published online showed about two dozen people gathered outside the church as the swastika-draped coffin emerged, shouting “presente!” with their right arms extended.
In a statement on Tuesday, the vicariate of Rome strongly condemned the scene and stressed that neither the parish priest nor the priest who celebrated the funeral, had known what was going to transpire outside after the funeral mass ended.
It called the swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag “a horrendous symbol irreconcilable with Christianity”.
“This ideological and violent exploitation, especially following an act of worship near a sacred place, remains serious, offensive and unacceptable for the church community of Rome and for all people of good will in our city,” it said.
The statement quoted the parish priest, the Rev Alessandro Zenobbi, as distancing himself and the church from “every word, gesture and symbol used outside the church, which are attributed to extremist ideologies far from the message of the gospel of Christ”.
Italian news reports identified the deceased as a 44-year-old former militant of the extreme rightwing group Forza Nuova, who died over the weekend from a blood clot.
Pope Francis is technically the bishop of Rome but delegates the day-to-day management of the diocese to his vicar, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis.
Rome’s Jewish community expressed outrage that such events could still happen more than seven decades after the end of the second world war and the fall of Italy’s fascist dictatorship.
“It is unacceptable that a flag with a swastika can still be shown in public in this day and age, especially in a city that saw the deportation of its Jews by the Nazis and their fascist collaborators,” the statement said.
After a raid on Rome’s Jewish neighbourhood on 16 October 1943, more than 1,000 of the Italian capital’s Jews were deported, most to the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Only 16 returned.
The Jewish community statement on Tuesday said the funeral incident was “even more outrageous because it took place in front of a church”.
A similar incident took place outside another Rome church in March last year.
The official says it was not a national ground stop and may have been issued by a regional air traffic control facility.
“No warning was issued by NORAD HQ,” regarding a potential threat to the US, according to Captain Pamela Kunze, the chief NORAD spokesperson.
The Federal Aviation Administration, responsible for the nation’s air traffic control system, and NORAD have not responded to CNN’s multiple requests for comment on why some pilots were ordered to land and prevented from taking off from multiple West Coast airports on Monday afternoon, citing a “national ground stop.”
The NORAD spokeswoman said the normal sequence following the launch was followed: The missile launch was detected, and it was assessed not to be a threat to the continental United States. The standard practice is for FAA to have a constant liaison in the NORAD ops center, therefore would have been aware of the quick assessment.
LiveATC air traffic control recordings of the Burbank Airport in California detail a controller telling a Southwest flight “there’s ground stops all departures, all airports right now. The message we got is it’s until further notice.”
Another recording of the control tower frequency in Hillsboro, Oregon, captures the controller telling the pilot of a Cessna to land, saying “we just got a notice that we need to do a national ground stop.”
A spokesperson for the San Diego International Airport told CNN the airport “was instructed by Air Traffic Control that there was a national ground stop but shortly after [5-7 minutes] our operations team was told it was lifted.”
Other West Coast airports contacted by CNN said they were unaware of the order.
It is not clear why the ground stop was put in place because a statement from US Forces Korea said the test posed no threat to US or South Korean territory or military personnel, but “the missile launch highlights the destabilizing impact of (North Korea’s) illicit weapons program.”
North Korea conducted what is thought to be a ballistic missile test around 07:27 am local time Tuesday (5:27pm ET Monday), the missile was launched form inland and traveled east and falling into the sea.
US Strategic Command and NORAD uses satellites and radar to track every missile launch around the globe and are able to quickly assess whether a launch poses a threat to the United States.
North Korea is not publicly known to have deployed a reliable long-range missile with a reliable capability to reach the West Coast, officials have told CNN in the past, though North Korea has continued to develop their program including progress on their long-range ballistic missiles.
Medical staff treated Frank Clark for Covid-19 at Western Reserve Hospital in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, last week.Credit…Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
The number of Americans hospitalized with Covid-19 has surpassed last winter’s peak, underscoring the severity of the threat the virus continues to pose as the extremely contagious Omicron variant tears through the United States.
As of Sunday, 142,388 people with the virus were hospitalized nationwide, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, surpassing the peak of 142,315 reported on Jan. 14 of last year. The seven-day average of daily hospitalizations was 132,086, an increase of 83 percent from two weeks ago.
The Omicron wave has overwhelmed hospitals and depleted staffs that were already worn out by the Delta variant. It has been driven in large part by people younger than 60. Among people older than 60, daily admissions are still lower than last winter.
The hospitalization totals also include people who test positive for the virus incidentally after being admitted for conditions unrelated to Covid-19; there is no national data showing how many people are in that category.
Cases
Hospitalizations
Deaths
300%
of last winter’s peak
About this data
Sources: State and local health agencies (cases, deaths); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (hospitalizations).
As cases soared over the past few weeks to an average of over 737,000 per day, far higher than last winter’s peak, public health officials have argued that caseloads were of limited significance because Omicron is less virulent than Delta and other variants, and that vaccines, and especially boosters, offered protection against severe illness.
But the surge’s sheer volume has overwhelmed hospitals across the country. And outside cities like New York, where Omicron hit early and has pushed hospitals to the brink, it is unlikely to have peaked.
Current hospitalizations are one of the most reliable measures of the severity of the pandemic over time, because they are not influenced by testing availability or by spikes in minor cases.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, told ABC News last week that it was “much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations,” which lag behind cases.
About a quarter of U.S. hospitals are experiencing critical staffing shortages, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states, like Oregon, have deployed the National Guard to help. Others, like Illinois and Massachusetts, are delaying elective surgeries — meaning surgeries that are scheduled, as opposed to an emergency, a category that can include procedures like a mastectomy for a cancer patient. In some cases, employees with asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic coronavirus infections have been working, potentially putting patients at risk.
After nearly two years, “even the most dedicated individuals are going to be tired and worn out, if not burned out and dealing with mental health issues as a consequence,” said Dr. Mahshid Abir, an emergency physician at the University of Michigan who is a researcher at the RAND Corporation.
Data in some of the first cities hit by Omicron also show deaths spiking sharply — not as fast as case rates, but fast enough to warn of more devastation to come.
Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel are also falling ill themselves, and while most are vaccinated and have not needed hospitalization, their illness still keeps them out of work. Now, hospitals overwhelmed by coronavirus patients are ill equipped to handle other emergencies like heart attacks, appendicitis and traumatic injuries.
“The demand is going up and the supply is going down, and that basically doesn’t paint a good picture for people and communities — not just for Covid, but for everything else,” Dr. Abir said.
